1960s-era condo tower the first in San Antonio to add...

1of3The Olmos Tower high-rise started installing fire suppression sprinklers on Sept. 17, 2018, in the common areas of the condominium building. A 2015 San Antonio ordinance requires all older high-rises to be retrofitted with sprinklers by 2027. Olmos Towers is combining the sprinkler installation with a renovation the building’s lobby.Photo: William Luther /San Antonio Express-News

2of3The Olmos Tower high-rise started installing fire suppression sprinklers on Sept. 17, 2018, in the common areas of the condominium building. A 2015 San Antonio ordinance requires all high-rises to be retrofitted with sprinklers by 2027. Olmos Tower was built in 1966.Photo: William Luther /San Antonio Express-News

3of3A new pipe with a red coupler is installed Sept. 17, 2018, as part of a new sprinkler system being added to the common areas of the Olmos Tower high-rise condominiums. A 2015 ordinance requires all older high-rises in San Antonio to be retrofitted with sprinklers by 2027. The ordinance was passed in the aftermath of deadly fire at the Wedgwood senior-living high rise in Castle Hills.Photo: William Luther /San Antonio Express-News

Workers this week are installing sprinklers inside a 1960s-era condominium tower in San Antonio, making it the first older high-rise to comply with a city ordinance aimed at preventing fatalities during fires.

The City Council passed the law in 2015 in response to a fire a year earlier that killed five residents of the Wedgwood Senior Apartments. That 11-story building had sprinklers only in the basement.

The Wedgwood is in Castle Hills, but fire officials in San Antonio saw the tragedy as a wake-up call and started to push for sprinklers in older buildings.

They identified about 30 high-rises, residential and commercial, that were built before 1982, the year San Antonio first mandated sprinkler protection in new high-rises.

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Residential high-rises that lack sprinklers:

Aurora Apartments, 509 Howard Street

Fair Avenue Apartments (SAHA), 1215 Fair Avenue

Four Thousand One Condos, 4001 N. New Braunfels

Northview Tower Condos, 7039 San Pedro Avenue

Olmos Tower Condominiums, 700 E. Hildebrand

Victoria Plaza (SAHA), 411 Barrera

Villa Tranchese Apartments (SAHA) 307 Marshall

Wurzbach Tower Condos, 7701 Wurzbach Road

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Of those 30, eight are residential: Four condo buildings; three rent-subsidized apartment buildings owned by the San Antonio Housing Authority, and one privately owned apartment building, the Aurora Apartments, where rents for some of the 105 units are also government-subsidized. The remainder are commercial buildings.

Under the city’s ordinance, a building is classified as a high-rise if it is 75 feet, or about seven or eight floors, or taller. That height is beyond where fire equipment usually can reach from the ground level.

Studies show the risk of dying in a residential fire drops by 80 percent when sprinklers are present, according to the National Fire Protection Association.

San Antonio does not require older apartment complexes with fewer than seven floors to retrofit with sprinklers unless they undergo a major renovation, change the type of occupancy or the number of units, officials said. In recent months, such buildings have been the scene of fatal fires.

All the high-rises have until 2027 to be retrofitted with sprinklers.

The owners of the 15-story Olmos Tower Condomiums decided not to wait that long. They are having the sprinklers installed now in tandem with the remodeling of the lobby.

“The ceiling was opened, so we thought it would be smart and to go ahead and do it,” said Bill Kanyusik, condo owner and a member of the five-person board of Olmos Tower. Built in 1966 on Hildebrand Avenue at Stadium Drive, it has 54 units and affords stunning views of the city.

The owners are not, however, required to install sprinklers in individual units. Since the condos themselves are privately owned — unlike apartments — the building has to install sprinklers only in common areas, such as the hallways, lobby and clubhouse.

Christopher Monestier, assistant chief of the San Antonio Fire Department, said such an arrangement is not as safe as having sprinklers in individual units. Granted, hallway sprinklers do protect those fleeing a fire and can stop a fire from spreading in common areas.

“But, obviously, unit sprinklers are safer, so we encourage and we recommend them,” he said, estimating the cost to be about $3.50 to $7.50 a square foot. “We were surprised there weren’t any takers (at Olmos).”

A compromise ordinance

When the sprinkler ordinance was being drafted three years ago, various stakeholders met with city officials, Monestier said. At these meetings, condo owners argued they shouldn’t have to install sprinklers at all.

“They felt their buildings were safe enough,” he said. “They worried about property damage from water leaking, damage to their expensive artwork. They even fought having sprinklers in the common areas.”

The condo owners finally agreed to a compromise that exempted them from having individual sprinklers, which mimics a similar ordinance in Houston, Monestier said.

Kanyusik said none of the condos’ 47 owners, who together share management of the building, opted to get sprinklers inside their units, even those living on uppermost floors.

The tower “is concrete after concrete,” he said of the building. “It’s a ton of cement, so we don’t have a lot of structures that can burn.”

He said maintenance workers check the fire doors every day, and hallways are relatively short, making escape easier in the event of a fire.

“Every single unit is probably, at most, five to seven steps from the stairwell,” said Kanyusik, who lives on the 15th floor and said he could escape to his concrete balcony to await firefighters, if need be. “There’s a feeling our building is safe, so people thought it wasn’t worth the expense.”

Kanyusik noted that Olmos Towers owners could change their minds at any time about adding sprinklers in their own units.

The common-area sprinkler installation will cost $200,000, Kanyusik said, an expense split among the owners. They hired an engineering contractor and sprinkler installation company to do the job.

Kanyusik said condo owners can rent out their units, if they want. However, no more than six units can be rented at any one time, so the building doesn’t become “like an investor-type property.”

Monestier said the fact private condo owners can rent their units “sounds like a bit of a loophole” that may have slipped past the ordinance’s authors.

In the next year, the San Antonio Housing Authority will begin to add sprinklers in its three high-rise buildings, including every apartment, which total more 600, a SAHA spokeswoman said.

Victoria Plaza, built in 1959, will be the first to be retrofitted, undertaken as part of a $16.5 million renovation. She said final approval for the project, which will also update the electrical system, air conditioning, flooring and windows, should come in October, with construction starting a month later.

The two other properties will be renovated and retrofitted early next year.

Deadly fires at shorter buildings

Since 2003, all new apartment buildings, multifamily dwellings and hotels in San Antonio must be equipped with sprinklers, regardless of how many stories they are.

That still leaves older apartment complexes that are shorter than high-rises without any requirement to retrofit with sprinklers. Monestier said such a mandate would be so costly it would “destroy the affordable housing industry” in San Antonio.

The need for sprinklers even in shorter buildings was recently underscored by a deadly fire at Iconic Village Apartments in San Marcos, a two-story complex near Texas State University. Five people died on the second floor and several others were injured when they had to leap out of windows to escape. The cause is still under investigation.

It didn’t have sprinklers, which were not required when it was built in 1970. As in San Antonio, older apartment buildings in San Marcos don’t have to be retrofitted with sprinklers, unless they undergo substantial renovation.

A little over a month after the San Marcos fire, a fatal fire at a two-story apartment complex in San Antonio claimed the life of a 68-year-old woman. Two other renters were injured in a fire at Ashler Oaks Apartment, built in 1968, on the Northwest Side in the 4100 block of Parkdale Street. Officials said the cause was a cooking fire.

At the Wedgwood, the scene of the tragedy that prompted the stronger sprinkler ordinance, the new owner is spending millions of dollars to renovate the 1965 building and will reopen it to seniors, probably in December 2019, five years after the fire.

Owner Pat Biernacki said it will have a comprehensive fire protection system, with new fire alarms and sprinklers in all the units and common areas. The tower’s elevators will also be replaced. And he’s creating a fire command center, a designated area on the property where fire crews can go.

Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje has been a reporter for more than 30 years. She began her career as a calendar listings/file clerk at the now-closed San Antonio Light, where she went on to write for the Sunday magazine She then spent eight years writing features for the Houston Chronicle.

She returned to her hometown in 2001 and has worked at the Express-News since then in various capacities – columnist, feature writer, social services reporter. She currently covers general assignments for the Metro section.

She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in English from the University of Texas at San Antonio and has won a number of local, state and national journalism awards during her career.